***Spoilers***

The film is set in very very near future, just days before 1900s turn to 2000s. This should alert the viewer that it's not pretending to be a plausible exploration of the impats of evolving technology, but just to accept the plot-driving gadget and suspend disbelief. The gadget, SQUIDS, records experiences straights from the brain and lets them be repeated, just as they were experienced the first time. The plot revolves around one of these recordings, proof that famous politically active black rapper Jeriko One was shot by white cops in cold blood. Police violence is a major theme.

The other theme is men watching women, and women having to come up with strategies to deal with this. We have two women: Lornette "Mace" Mason (Angela Bassett) and Faith Justin (Juliette Lewis). Faith has decided to make the most out of being the object of male gaze. She pouts and smiles and makes faces, and squirms and twists her lithe body provocatively clad only in glitter and fripperies. Men's eyes are easily lured by her looks and performances. She enjoys being watched. In fact, she's quite addicted to being gazed at constantly. But we know, even though she has not yet accepted it, that it will never be fully on her terms, no matter how much she tries to influence her watchers. They can at any point just decide to drop her, as it happens at the end of the film. Her hitherto faithful audience leaves without a backward glance. Mace on the other hand has an opposite strategy. She's carved a space for herself that does not require being seen. She's made herself useful, irreplaceable. She wears uniforms that render her almost invisible, a function rather than an individual. She does not smile, except once looking at her son. And actually there's a third woman too, a prostitute called Iris (eye anatomy!) who witnesses and records the murder of Jeriko One. She represents a woman in the male gaze world who does not realise she needs to have a strategy, like Faith and Mace do. Iris just goes with the flow and that gets her killed. Or maybe what actually gets her killed is that she subverts the holy order – daring to see/watch/record men. 

The gruesome killing scene is the most straightforward commentary on the theme of male gaze. The killer forces Iris to view her own violation and killing through his eyes with the SQUID gadget. Just the way female moviegoers have to see female bodies objectified and mutilated, over and over again, and participate in the on-screen violation of women for viewing pleasure (things are changing since #metoo but this isn't something that was left in the 90s). But gendered gaze pops up about every 5 minutes in the movie, one really does not need to work too hard to discover this theme.

Then there are men. Firstly, Lenny, a shady dealer of borrowed memories. He's buying and selling SQUIDS recordings on something resembling MiniDiscs. Lenny has a beautiful face (especially when looking sorrowfully at his lost love) but he's no hero. Barely a protagonist. He's a no-good loser powered only by his own replayed memories of his ex-girlfriend Faith and quite helpless. He has a friend, Max, who even at his best is annoying and assholish. He's also a traitor, killer and a psychopath. And then there's paranoid, violent and mean music mogul Philo, who's dating Faith and producing Jeriko One's music and SQUIDS junkie Tick. 

Allegedly Lenny is the protagonist, but he gets nothing done and would be killed at every turn if not for Mace. She's the real protagonist. Mace is flawless. In the world of mean, bad, loser men with horrible taste in clothes, she’s competent, professional, fierce, responsible, elegant and caring. She would be too perfect even for a movie character, in fact a nasty reviewer would suspect a self-gratifying self-insert by Bigelow … except that Mace has one fundamental flaw that drags her down despite all her good aspects. She has lousy taste in men. Her ex-husband was a criminal who didn’t give a shit about exposing their kid to some kind of disgusting behaviour that warranted a strike from the vice squad. It was of course a tragedy, but I can guarantee Mace’s girl friends breathed a collective sigh of relief. At last that asshole was out of her life! We hope he got a hundred year sentence! And then there were a few years of blessed peace, she focused on her career and parenting her son. But as soon as her SQUIDS dealer friend Lenny started spiralling from just being sketchy into actively stalking his ex-girlfriend, her unfortunate instincts are activated and she began to feel a romantic pull towards him. I can just hear Mace’s girl friends groaning.  

Girl friend 1: “So what’s up with Mace? I haven’t heard from her for quite some time. Is she still driving cool limos for the private security firm?”

Girl friend 2: “Yeah she’s still chauffeuring rich men around, the pay is good, the uniform is neat, the customers are OK I guess, and anyway she swore she’s not going back to waitressing never ever. But, well… some bad news too…”

Girl friend 1: “ Oh no! Please don’t say she’s gotten back together with her asshole ex!”

Girl friend 2: “At least not that, thank heavens, although I’m not sure if this is even worse. You remember Lenny?”

Girl friend 1: “Hmm you mean Lenny, the skinny white dude dealing those weird SQUIDS discs? That play out people’s memories like you were experiencing them yourself?”

Girl friend 2: “That guy. With the horrible ties and fake Rolexes. The ex-cop. Who’s always pining after his ex-girl Faith.”

Girl friend 1: “Hahaha the guy who lost Faith! But wait what are you saying, I can’t believe it, are you really saying our Mace has gotten herself mixed up with that loser? I mean she could pick any guy she wanted, with her looks, and those awesome toned arms, and she’s so nice and reliable too. Why on Earth would she fall for that guy?”

Girl friend 2: “I know right? This really sucks. But on the other hand, think about the men in this universe: losers, violent assholes, junkies and fucking sick in the head killer rapists. I guess losers is the best we can get.”

Girl friend 1: “True, sadly. The double amputee guy working at the club seems OK though. Kinda cute too. Should I ask him out maybe?”

Girl friend 2: “I heard a rumour he’s a voyeur pervert. Better stay away from him. But the silver fox police boss is quite attractive for an old white geezer.”

Girl friend 1: “Well I heard a rumour he’s ‘safekeeping’ proof about Jeriko One’s murder and now it can never be proven that it was cops. He’s no better than the rest of them. There’s not one bearable man in this entire universe. I wish I could just date Mace. She’d keep me safe and I’d treat her right. Sigh.”

Girl friend 2: “Same. Siiiigh.”

I'm not going to deny the final scene is beautiful and touching and effective, but for Mace's sake I hope the kiss with Lenny  is just a temporary freakout caused by heightened emotions after danger and violence. 

Anyway, Mace and Lenny kiss. 1999 changes to 2000. Confetti floats. Los Angeles at the eve of the new millennium has been spared from erupting into inevitable racial violence.  Mace, despite her heart telling her she should send the evidence of Jeriko One's murder to mass media, was helpless against Lenny's pleas ("trust meee", Mace's kryptonite apparently) and handed it over to a police boss. We never find out what happens, but we can assume the police boss makes sure some kind of secret justice is served. He's a good guy after all, according to Lenny. And so the citizens of Los Angeles think the killing was (black) gang violence, and the police organization never needs to confront its racism, and nothing changes but the 20th century to 21st. I guess that's one reason why this film has disappeared into oblivion instead of becoming a cult classic. The film deals with (white) police violence against black citizens, and portrays this as unjust and horrible. But still, it fails at the very end to take a stance for reform, refuses to see any hope for a better world. There's revenge against the particular perpetratos, but not the structural step forward 2020s audiences would expect to follow from the entire series of events. Everything fizzles out. The other reason why this movie does not resonate with 2020s audiences is the positively antiquated approach to privacy. The entire plot is set into motion by the music mogul trying to cover up that he has his top artists under surveillance. He wants to see what they are up to in their free time and this would be so horrible that his career would crash if it came out. People used to the ubiquitous gaze of the social media era to which we perform regarless of gender, can hardly fathom why this is supposed to be such a big deal. 

Final verdict:

Fascinating cybrpunkish thriller touching upon many 1990s big social themes, of which many are still relevant. Everyone else but ultra cool Angela Bassett dresses in hideous 90s retro mix-up fashions and music track is the edgiest and grittiest 90s has to offer plus some "world music" touches, so the movie is a perfect zeitgeist capture. Gross violence is for once there for other reason than gratifying the disgusting desires of the viewers, although one has to read feminist film critique first to catch up on that. Not to be watched when feeling queasy or unwell. But definitely worth a view. 

"Beyond good and evil" is a mad scientist trope, but I find this Musk-inspired scientist type to have more understandable motivations than villains usually. Starting out with the noblest intentions, but being blinded by one's own intellect and arrogance makes much more sense than villains that just want to destroy and/or rule the world.

Carlton Drake from the movie Venom, Natham Bateman from Ex Machina, and Niander Wallace from Blade Runner 2049 should arrange to meet. Perhaps they could pool resources and balance each other's ethical blind spots to actually manage to do something good. 

This time, through instinct or clever interpretation of marketing surveys the SW franchise, aims expertly and directly below belt: right in my ovaries. Pow kaboom! Short episodes, elevating the struggles of a busy career parent into an heroic storyline and most importantly, the cutest character everrrr seen on screens small or big. It’s engineered for those moments when kids are finally asleep and there’s going to be another workday way too soon but some escapism, excitement and satisfaction is needed. Baby Yoda, oh! Cute appeal bypassing all rational sense, tickling the brain parts that just want to nurture and protect helpless, tiny creatures. 

It’s like the character department managed to create a cross between Baby Groot and the Hypnotoad from Futurama. Baby Yoda makes gruff and sensible Mandalorian ignore the protection of the foundling kids in his nest, and nobody begrudges him for it, neither in-story nor in the audience, since it makes complete sense. Any other kids just pale into insignificance compared to the wrinkly green ball of adorableness that’s Baby Yoda. Those little nose wrinklings and his little hands that don’t even reach the top of his head, awww! Are Yodas actually sort of cuckoos that prey on the nurturing instincts of humanoids? It’s lucky they are so rare. 

No wonder the Empire is after him as well – if they have Baby Yoda on their side, everyone will just follow him and they’ll hardly even need stormtroopers and all that machinery anymore. Fear and lust for power is a powerful motivation, but there’s much to be said for harnessing the power of cute. A baby Yoda dictator could bend a nation to his will just by looking a bit disappointed. Don’t cry, baby Yoda! I will kill the insurgents! I will bomb the civilians if you just smile a little bit! Anything to make you feel happy and safe!

So far the best contender for this prize ("Auroora Lamminlaine Recognition Award for a Plausible Story Where Everything Does Not Go to Hell in a Handbasket") has been L.X.Beckett's Gamechanger (2019). It takes into account that it's not going to be easy and effortless to change our society and infrastructure into something sustainable. It's got detailed worldbuilding, including extrapolating gig economy and digitalisation. And yes, I've been asking why games are so rarely featured in SF stories, when they are such a large part of our world today. But it's got some issues too. First, I found out I can't stand hashtags in literary text. It's like little coctail sticks poking my eyeballs on every page. #justno. Secondly, there is a major "stop the press" plot thing that should change everyone's worldview, and ... nobody seems to care much. No-one is really interested in this mind-blowing thing. This makes it hard for me to understand the characters or anyone in the book. Admittedly there is a lot going on, but still. I mean, well, I don't even know if anyone's reading these ramblings, but just in case, stop reading now if you don't want spoilers, but aliens. You can't have first contact and then just be like it's an event just on the same level of importance as a regular all-human conspiracy. At least one character must be absolutely awestruck and abandon everything they are doing to start speculating about life in the Universe. If you want to win the Auroora Lamminlaine Recognition Award, that is. I hope this author keeps writing more, going to follow them, just wish they abandon the hashtags. 

There are a couple of solarpunk anthologies I've borrowed from library and am still reading, they are of uneven quality - some of the stories are quite simple formula of not-very-plausible green tech thing that saved us from catastrophe + young person finding their way in life, which leaves me unsatisfied. The best ones seem to either be more evocative, mood-based, poetic things or then something like a detective story set in an acceptably hopeful future. 

Other than literature, I actually enjoy speculative (green) architecture a lot. All these concept illustrations of skyscrapers dripping with green! They of course don't need to build a coherent explanation why this all works and how's democracy and where's the energy coming from etc. But on the up side, some of those concepts have been actually turned into reality. Just google Verde 25 Torino. That looks like a movie set but is really there. Someone is living within those green and rust walls. (I wonder who takes care of the plants? Is there a building gardener? Do the inhabitants take turns clipping and fertilising?) Perhaps we need to take the aesthetics route and build from there. 


EDIT: Writing this post in a beautiful non-commercial space with actual trees inside (Oodi library in Helsinki), where I had arrived on my rusty but trusty bicycle, after eating a subsidized vegan lunch, makes me quite hard to satisfy as far as utopias go. I think I live a fairly utopian life, only too bad the energy and resource underpinnings of our society are not long-term sustainable. I haven't been able to find even professional future scenarios about how a sustainable lifestyle is actually goign to look. Is it just so hard to envision, or is it actually impossible?

Akira is the story of a bullied kid. Power is represented by reversal of gravity. Consciously lifting heavy things and throwing them and also sheer unintended runoff force that makes small stones levitate. I kind of think (tentatively) that gravity is a symbol for “normal order of things”, including the social system. Tetsuo breaks free of the pecking order that’s been constricting him since childhood, of course it turns out this constriction has also kept him contained and given him form. In the end everyone cares for the survival of Kaneda, no matter that he’s a bully, annoying, has no special great qualities except for physical and social skills. In contrast, Tetsuo’s girlfriend gets crushed by Tetsuo’s uncontrollable bulk and nobody but Tetsuo cares for her death, even though she’s absolutely innocent to the destruction and mayhem. This is what happens, the defeated inner story of the bullied kid says. If there is someone foolish enough to care for me, they will perish alongside me, while the successful and popular ones get everything they wish for. 

Random observations

Weird thing in Akira is that the city is supposed to be built only 30 years ago, but it looks very run-down and used. Could this level of wear and tear happen in 30 years? Maybe if it’s not maintained at all…

CD jukebox in the bar was super cool. I would have thought CD's were already normal technology by 1988 but apparently they still had the wow factor.

I just remembered I found Yamagata’s messy hair quite attractive back when reading the manga in mid-90s. Too bad he got blown up by Tetsuo.

Sounds like Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker but is also Frozen II, another popular Disney franchise. I wonder why raging sea is featured in two mega movies recently? Is it because of some new 3D program addition that makes rendering waves easier? Or is it because the concept of dangerous sea is these days linked to sea level rise and climate change (and thus more likely to trigger distress in women)? Mere co-incidence possible but highly unlikely.

The latest Star Wars was OK but I found myself thinking at times that I may have lost the ability to be emotionally moved by cinema. However, Frozen II reminded me it's not that difficult to press certain mental buttons and produce an emotional response. I mean of course it takes skill. But I was not particularly emotionally invested in this animation, and yet was made to feel ... I'm not sure what's this emotion, it's just there in the body, mixture of slightly teary/excited/moved.
I don't exactly like being made to feel emotional like that, from a combination of high-pitched sounds, fast paced movement and certain keywords/themes (motherhood death loss forever nostalgia memories child lonely breaking free). It's just a reaction, like adrenaline rush after being jump scared. I sort of feel Frozen II did not earn the right to manipulate my feels like that, though I can't pinpoint why not. It had as much content as one can demand from a sequel of a popular animation film, even more actually. And those feels are what people generally go to see movies for. Ehh, I'm just being difficult.

I have never truy understood "bad boys" as an attractive romantic prospect. Not in entertainment and especially not in real life. But now! Thanks to broody, bad-tempered, side-switching planet-killer Kylo Ren, I am starting to see the appeal. Yes, he's ridiculous in his unfettered bursts of anger, but there is something touchingly toddler-like in his helplessness reining in his emotions. He can't help it, the poor thing! There is obviously something broken within him. But its precisely the child-likeness of his tantrums, the immaturity itself which promises possibility of healing, change and growth. [To my horror, I discovered the canon age of Kylo Ren was 29 in the last movie – in my head he's no older than early twenties max. Underdeveloped emotional regulation can be cute in a young man, but positively offputting in an adult one.]

So, on one hand the brokenness that inspires motherly pity and tenderness, on the other hand the hope of change, this is a potent mixture. Now, add to this the respect of Rey's physical space (nevermind the mindfucks). Kylo Ren extends his black-gloved hand for Rey. He wants Rey to take it, by her own choice. He wants Rey to want him, and is open about it. So much unnecessary suffering and anguish has resulted from the desire of being desired being labeled a solely feminine thing. IMO plenty of male misbehaviour is fueled by being ashamed of or not even knowing what to do with the wish of being pursued, desired, admired etc. Kylo Ren for all his faults has accepted this part of himself, albeit obsessively directed at Rey only. So, he's a merciless killer, tyrant and traitor, but also kind sorta respectful, and, I guess this is important, only at Rey. Nothing so sweet as being treated nicely by an otherwise complete asshole. 

The not seen in several generations special connection is ofc intoxicating. She can and does pull him out of the darkness, with a lightsaber thrust, and at a tragic moment, but anyways he abandons his evil ways – for her! But I'm so glad of this 21st century fairytale, where the mystical under unlucky stars connection to a dangerous, difficult man does not compel Rey to forge a relationship. It's not destiny, it's not fate, at least not the sort that binds her for the rest of her life. It's just a weird if memorable side episode in her life, and her _real_ life is with her _real_ friends, who've been worrying about this disturbing compulsion with that weird violent dude but are there to give a big hug now that it's all over. Pheew! I am sooo thankful for this. It's about personal choice in the new trilogy and they kept it consistent even with Rey-Lo.

A short list of pros and cons

- found out why Stormptroopers are so lousy shooters. They are mostly forced conscripts who don't even want to shoot anyone.

- but if this is the case, then why no-one, not even Finn, is trying to propagate for trying to stage a Stormtrooper mutiny? Rhis bothered me in the previous episode already, but especially now that it was confuirmed Finn was not an exception. I was expecting in the end the Empire/Last Order to be defeated by their own people, I even felt it was being foreshadowed a bit heavy-handedly, and then it never came. 

- It's no surprise to anyone Poe has past flings all over the galaxy, of all genders and orientations. Fits the character. But now that he's found Finn, why try to reignite past flames? Setting up possible romances right and left but not fulfilling any of them – romantic conclusions left as an exercise for the fanfic-leaning portion of the audience, I guess. Now you can choose of any ethnicity and gender! Blaah. 

- C3PO being awarded a bit of dignity was nice. I feel for the guy, always doing his best to fit in, always missing the mark. At last someone gave him any choice in his fate. And he chose to be a hero. Oh Rey! Half stone-cold, half really emphatetic, esp. to droids and non-human lifeforms.

- Don't complain that it was illogical that Sith planet produced a fleet of gigantic spaceships. They had nothing else to do for decades and obviously stripped their planet bare to produce materials for the fleet. 

- All in all OK but not spectacular. Must have been extremely stressful film to create a script for.

I can come up with a few prompts right away.

1) Neverending stream of new Culture novels. Like printing money if they are any good. But probably just causing a an uneasy sadness. I wonder how it feels to be truly moved by a computer-generated text for the first time.

2) Raven Stratagem series but with less characters and more semiotics. Also, even more textiles. Textiles part should be easy, but coming up with new abstract concepts with any coherence not happening soon.

3) Murderbot in Three Body Problem. I prompted Talk to Transformer with 2 sentences and it generated something pretty plausible for a first try. 

Murderbot listened to the speech about impending attack of the aliens from the far-away, unfortunate planet pulled by merciless gravity from three sides. No more humans, no more telenovelas – that sounded bad. But it was really good because he liked good television. It was good enough, anyway.  There were more telepaths around, so he knew that they would not be too much trouble.  He watched as the robot's eyes narrowed, its head tilted slightly upward, and it looked towards the sky. The aliens had made some kind of distress call to the nearest planetary defense force, a few thousand light-years away, and were in desperate need of help. Kuruk was there, on his way to the planet. Kuruk would help them. Kuruk had always helped others, no matter what. Kuruk was a good man. Good enough, in fact, for a murderer robot to be interested in him.

(not bad, looking forward to reading more about this Kuruk dude, telepaths a bit unnecessary addition but I guess that's where the editing comes in. A proper Versificator should have sophisticated but simple to use interface for removing unwanted content and dialing characters' attributes up and down.)

Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker, belongs to a recently emerged genre neurothriller, where the plot and central questions revolve around brains and consciousness. It is also a serial killer story, which I find not interesting, but I persevered because reading about brains is interesting enough I’m willing to tolerate all kinds of improbable set-ups and blaah plot devices. 

Near-future USA, where brain scanning has become commonplace. A middle-aged academic dude gets drafted to help FBI to solve a serial killer case. Our dude is an university lecturer and his specialty is neuropsychology’s philosophical and ethical implications. The serial killer is his old best friend, who does gruesome brain modifications to his victims. Our dude has to figuratively get in the head of his friend while friend quite literally gets in the head of several other people. Also, he has to explain several times how brains work what consciousness is, what “self” is, and especially what it is not.

What I find either not believable or extremely sinister is the lack of knowledge about brains, consciousness etc everyone apart from protagonist, adversary and this one older professor side character show. In the book, brain scanning and neural manipulation technologies have improved a lot compared to current situation, and I would assume they would be standard background knowledge for example for crime investigators etc., even if just vaguely. But everyone who hears our protagonist explain how consciousness is “just an illusion” etc is deeply disturbed at this new information. Shocked, really. Either worldbuilding falters or then the surveillance state the future USA has become is also actively suppressing information about neuroscience. Internet is in total control of the state so this would be a reasonable assumption… if not for the psychology professor protagonist himself having no idea that his field is shrouded in secrecy.  But perhaps entire troublesome fields of information could be dampened and withdrawn from the collective common knowledge with enough information manipulation power.

Some sort of petty/childish glee at shocking people with your radical views pervades this whole book. I ofc don't know what kind of education the expected reader base has, but I knew by age 4 that thinking is done in the brain. While this understanding has gained details and sophistication, and a few difficult philosophical questions have arisen, the basic premise is the same. So it's hard to understand the tone of the book.

Reading Neuropath made me remember two other books that fall within neurothriller genre, and certain parallels appear. 

Quantum Night by Rober J. Sawyer is marketed as a thriller but it’s actually relaxing, pleasant read about academic researchers figuring out that the world is in a way more complicated we imagined but in practical terms actually simpler. I kind of wish this “you can safely ignore most people as they do not have interesting/worthwhile inner lives” position had been drawn a little further, the radical ethical implications explored more thoroughly. I sure can emphatise with the feeling that many people seem to have not much going on in their heads. But I find it sort of lazy and lowest common denominator under-the-belt strike to use that feeling, which I’m sure many people share, instead of challenging it… kind of “Mary Sue” thing, “just me, you and a precious few other people on this Earth are worth anything, and here’s a witty scientific quantum neuro proof for it”. Like, already there’s a tendency to nonhumanize others than those not belonging in one’s immediate social circle, and a smart writer can of course use that to elicit a pleasurable reaction from the reader, but is it the right thing to do? Esp. given that much of the book deals with utilitarian ethics. 

Blindsight by Peter Watts takes human (and vampire) brains with their inbuilt possibilities and limitations into space. Alien contact story where, as traveling and coming into contact with foreign culture often does, meeting aliens actually makes us see ourselves more clearly, our idiosyncrasies, our obsessions, our capacities, our limitations. Of these three books Blindsight is unquestionably the best. It really draws the conclusions as far as possible, it is fascinating and attention-grabbing and terribly effectively written (really goes under your skin), with extremely creepy sense of wonder, and, well, all this without once having a middle-aged academic man giving a lengthy info-dump monologue to educate a strikingly beautiful woman who is eager to listen, and smart enough to grasp his ideas but not that smart as to express any counterarguments.

Why has this genre appeared now, when we’ve had brains all the time?

Neuroscience has advanced remarkably in the past few decades, making the age-old philosophic questions of identity, free will, perception etc more tangible and immediate. There’s also another cause for this surge in interest in brains, what they do and our inner experiences, one that does not require intense study of neurones and brain anatomy: It tends to be impolite or weird to discuss one’s mental states in detail, except for certain emotions that are socially approved parts of regular interaction. But the mental processes themselves, or atypical reactions, they just are not the thing to talk about out loud. If someone did, most likely they did not find anyone sharing the same condition and consequently shut about their strange experiences. Until recent years, when the semi-anonymity of internet made sharing these things easy and painless, and made possible finding others with the same condition no matter how rare. For example aphantasia, the inability to imagine visually, has become a recognised phenomenon, as well as trypophobia. And ASMR, which has grown to a wildly successful subculture. Probably also autism spectrum community has solidified and diversified thanks to internet. Oh, and The Dress! That really made clear we literally don’t see the world the same way and that there’s always an interpretative element at play.

Who knows what conditions and mental architecture differences remain yet to be discovered by this accidental but thanks to sheer numbers effective crowdsourcing method! Quite exciting, actually. I’m also guessing categorising people according to their method of thought will be the next big thing in self-help industry.

I used to assume everyone thinks like I do, ie in abstract concepts that have to be translated into words, the silence of their brains only occasionally disturbed by a stuck melody loop. But then I found out that all that talk about ‘inner voices’ and ‘inner monologues’ was not hyperbole or metaphor, it is the actual way many (if not most) people’s brains produce thoughts. It still feels incredible to me but I have to accept there are many different methods of thinking and that inner voice thing that to me appears a mental disturbance, even an illness, is just… normal. It is so easy to universalise from personal inner experience, since we are stuck in our own minds. So. My unconcern and many others’ concern for this idea that there is no “real” me may also be, instead of hysterizing and ridiculous naivety on the part of those others, pointing out a lack in me. Is there a more sophisticated consciousness, more deep, more subtle, more meaningful, more something, that I’m missing and that’s why I’m not appalled at the idea that the feeling of coherent self is the product of neurons firing? Have I just outed myself as only barely passing the consciousness threshold?

It is regrettable space is reduced to a metaphor of inner space in so many of today’s ostensibly space movies. This once profound comparison is by now a giggle-inducing cliche. To me the main value of this movie was not the completely predictable journey of self-discovery and relationship trauma disassembly. It was just an excuse to indulge in a visual and auditory feast of architecture and technology. The set designs were amazingly detailed and impressive, and the movie camera practically made love to the various surfaces, angles and control devices. Sounds of gloved fingers gently caressing and pushing buttons, technical fabrics sliding across each other, breath inside a sealed spacesuit helmet, all very intimate, amid Moon pirate car chases and hijacking a rocket about to lift off, create a delightful contradiction. ASMR porn, if one wants to be crass.

The whole movie was like arthouse-lite. Silent stares, internal whispered monologue a la Terence Malick, 'external as intenal' symbolism etc., but nothing is left hanging, everything is spelled out, and high-action scenes are expertly dosed along the storyline to keep the audience’s blood sufficiently saturated with adrenaline. Pitt’s character, the abandoned son of a famous astronaut, spoon-feeds his thought processes and their results to the viewer. Indeed, the movie would have been much improved if the monologue had been a tad less obvious. He seems to grasp his own motives already in the beginning of the movie so well there really is no need to go to the ends of the solar system to disentangle them. Pitt’s expression in close-up, all neutral and competent, except for the slight nervous shiver underneath his eyes, would have been much more effective without the monologue: “they are using me”, “was he always broken”, etc. He is a good actor, which the director does not seem to truly trust. 

The most touching parts were the recurring emotional self-assessments demanded of Roy. This dragging out, dissecting and measuring of the soul for one’s job, being forced to mentally expose possible weaknesses and imperfections for inhuman scrutiny, while knowing the range of acceptable variation is extremely narrow, explains (and for once without having to spell it out) why Roy McBride is closed off, emotionally stunted, more machine than human. Any outside impulse might endanger the empty calm he has spent years perfecting. That it is at the price of being unable to truly connect with other human beings… well, it is not his personal failing, but a sensible adaptation to the circumstances. Perhaps it was useful to let go of the trauma of being abandoned by his father, but was that really what was kept him and his wife apart? Or was it the all-encompassing and endless demands of total compliance of his job? And what will happen now that he’s in touch with his new-found emotions? Without them, he was superb in what he did. Are thirteen in a dozen emotions that every Dick and Jane have really worth sacrificing his unflinching competence? This guy who can fall off a space elevator, grab the wheel of a Moon vehicle at full speed while his spacesuit is punctured, land a malfunctioning rocket manually, all without his heartbeat noticeably being affected, shouldn’t we celebrate his choices instead of trying to correct him? If we want to go to the Moon, Mars, Neptune and beyond, we very well may need people who are cogs in the machine, and their rewards different from the usual ones. The movie warns of the danger of being engulfed by one’s professional obsessions, and this is certainly something to be watchful of, but surely there are other solutions than averaging everyone to the same emotional input and output.

Final verdict: ignoring the trite lesson about the importance of human connection (really if you want this lesson, My Little Ponies Friendship is Magic does it better), the movie is an elegy to technology and pragmatic architecture. Various layers of steel, fabric, concrete and plastic keep us perhaps separated from each other, but also alive in difficult environments. These materials are gently caressed by the camera’s gaze, and the result is strangely but pleasantly sensual. Rarely has the pressing of the launch button of a nuclear device been presented so that is feels physically satisfactory. After watching the movie, one feels heightened appreciation for switches and synthetic materials and perhaps even an unexpected desire to put on thick rubber gloves and run the encased fingers across a concrete wall. If that’s what you want, go and enjoy this uneven but interesting movie.